1 REPLIES: Aerography, 12- Noy and Noyes, 13- The Wedding-ring, 14- William Coddington, 16- Cigars and Segars, 1b.-Tamala and Tâmrakuitaka, Sanskrit Words for Tobacco-Douglas Rings: the Douglas Heart, 17Discovery of an Old Medal, 18-St. Thomas à BecketCurious Orthographic Fact - Adrian's Address to his Soul Dido aud Eneas Charles II.'s Flight from Worcester Parish Registers Tombstone Inscriptions Cave of Adullam Ceremonial at Induction The Living Skeleton, Claude Ambroise Seurat-"The Jackdaw of Rheims" -Skelp - Marvellous Stories of Sharks - The Prior's Pastoral Staff - Rudee: Defame: Birre - Perverse Pronunciation-Voltaire-Medal of James III. and Clementina Sobieski-The Cuckoo, &c.,.18. Notes on Books, &c. Notes. "In the kingdom of Amhara is Gueron, the famous rock on which the sons and brothers of the Emperor were confined till their accession to the throne. This custom, established about 1260, hath been abolished for two ages."-Voyage to Abyssinia, London, 1735, p. 200. "The kingdom of Amhara is yet more mountainous [than that of Tigre]. The Abyssins call these steep rocks Amba: there are many of them which appear to the sight like great cities; and one is scarcely convinced, even upon a near view, that one doth not see walls, towers, and bastions. It was on the barren summit of Amba-Guexa that the princes of the blood-royal passed their melancholy life, being guarded by officers who treated them often with great rigour and severity."-Ib. p. 204. "Anciently the princes who had any right or pretension to the crown were kept under a strong guard on Mount Guexon; which custom continued for two hundred years. Naod, the father of David, was the last who was raised from that prison to the throne. As this king was playing one day with a young prince about eight years old, a counsellor that stood by observed to him that this son was very much grown: the child immediately apprehending the meaning of his words, burst into tears, and lamented that he was grown only to be the sooner sent to Gueren. The king, touched at the reply, declared that the royal offspring should be no more confined in that manner: thus by this accident was an end put to the slavery of the princes of Abyssinia."16. p. 261, cf. 259. The old Dr. Johnson perhaps got his account from Tellez, or some of the earlier Portuguese writers, but I have not any of these, or Ludolph, at hand to refer to. If there be no historical foundation for the "blissful captivity" which Johnson pictures, it is probable that he followed Milton in decking the dreary scene of royal imprisonment with the traditions of "true Paradise." Hindoo geography unites Africa with the Indian Archipelago; and the Mount Meru of the Hindoo Paradise came to be identified with "Mount Amara, under the Ethiop line." Thence, Homer speaks of the Ethiopians as a happy and innocent race dwelling by the ocean stream, in a Paradise so delightful, that the gods often left Olympus to visit them and share in their festivities. Huet, in his treatise De la Situation du Paradis Terrestre, speaks of various writers who place Paradise in Africa under the equator, above the Mountains of the Moon, from which the Nile was said to take its rise. Tertullian says that, after the Fall, Paradise was girt about with the Torrid Zone, called in Scripture a flaming sword, and has been thus rendered unapproachable ever since, being separated from us and hidden as by a wall of fire. Huet is referred to by Le Grand in his appendix to Lobo, p. 207. |